Grief and the Use of Photographs. The night after a devastating tornado ripped through an Ohio town killing more than twenty people and destroying nearly all its buildings and homes, the evening news showed the destruction and interviewed the victims. One picture in particular seemed to sum up the tragedy and poignancy. There was a girl, perhaps ten, standing upon the rubble of what that morning had been her home.
With a teddy bear in the crook of her arm, she picked her way through the pile of boards and plaster. Page by page she recovered pieces of the family photo album. This girl was doing what others had said they would do in a fire. After saving people and pets, they would rescue the family album. Each time we look at the photographs of friends who have come to visit, relatives who have moved away or died, our memories grow larger. Often parents show their children relatives that they seldom see or may never have seen. Some people fear that being reminded of the past prevents a person from living in the present.
How to Tell If Your Shrink Sucks (And Then Fire Them) Who Benefits From Public Complaints? Spirituality for Beginners 4: Who Am I? Think about when you first meet someone. What do you want to know about them, and what do they want to know about you? The four dimensions we introduced in the previous post - - provide a good starting-point for separating and distinguishing one person from another, and therefore for getting to know somebody. In separating ourselves from everyone else, these are the categories we are most likely to use. Unless you are an identical twin, markers, your DNA molecules, are unique to you, as are the biological markers of your fingerprints. Other markers (important because they are visually apparent and do not require laboratory testing) include gender , age, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour and type, also skin colour.
People are not generally in the habit of taking detailed inventories of themselves (beyond, for example, ‘I am a happy/thoughtful/ shy person' etcetera), so markers may next come more readily to mind. Place of birth, Where you live now, Nationality, Race, Social class, Why People Are So Often the Opposite of What They Appear. An important method of transforming uncomfortable or unacceptable feelings into something more manageable is 'reaction formation', which is the superficial adoption and exaggeration of ideas and impulses that are diametrically opposed to one's own.
For example, a man who finds himself attracted to someone of the same sex may cope with the unacceptability of this attraction by over-acting heterosexual: going out for several beers with the boys, speaking in a gruff voice, banging his fists on the counter, whistling at pretty girls (or whatever people do these days), conspicuously engaging in a string of baseless heterosexual relationships, and so on. Other, classic, examples of reaction formation are the alcoholic who extolls the virtues of abstinence, the rich kid who organizes anti-capitalist rallies, the absent father who occasionally returns with big gestures to spoil and smother his children, and the angry person who behaves with exaggerated calm and courtesy.
Adapted from my new book, Smiling at Strangers. When I was a first-year medical student, my classmates and I used to go down to the hospital cafeteria between lectures to buy snacks. The women from whom we bought them at the check-out counters were all young and sullen, rarely even glancing up at their customers as they rang up purchases. Their customers, in turn, seemed equally uninterested in them. So I decided one day I was going to get them to smile each time they rang up my purchases. To do this, I decided I'd simply start smiling at them myself. "Hello! " I started saying each time I'd approach. At first, they actually shrank from me physically. Such, I discovered, is the power of a smile, even between strangers. I'm often lost in my own thoughts, trying to solve a problem , ruminating over one I can't, planning or thinking about what I'm about to do.
In the end, of course, I concluded that I really had no good reason not to smile at everyone. Are Emotions Prophetic? | Wired Science. For thousands of years, human beings have looked down on their emotions. We’ve seen them as primitive passions, the unfortunate legacy of our animal past. When we do stupid things – say, eating too much cake, or sleeping with the wrong person, or taking out a subprime mortgage – we usually blame our short-sighted feelings. People commit crimes of passion. There are no crimes of rationality. This bias against feeling has led people to assume that reason is always best. But what if this is all backwards? While there is an extensive literature on the potential wisdom of human emotion – David Hume was a prescient guy – it’s only in the last few years that researchers have demonstrated that the emotional system (aka Type 1 thinking) might excel at complex decisions, or those involving lots of variables.
The latest demonstration of this effect comes from the lab of Michael Pham at Columbia Business School. What explains these paradoxical results? Here’s where emotions come in handy. About Ritalin, Scare Tactics, and Medications for Kids with ADHD. The controversy over using Ritalin and other stimulants to treat ADHD surfaces repeatedly, often with emotional rhetoric which can lead those in need to avoid ever using such medications or allowing their children to, thereby giving up on a class of medications with enormous potential benefits. Examples of this genre of coverage include the Jan 28, 2012 article in the NYTimes " Ritalin Gone Wrong " (Alan Sroufe, PhD) and a response to that article in Psychology Today blogs, " Debunking Ritalin " (Jefferson Fish, Ph.D.)
What follows is an interview with Edward Hallowell, M.D., which offers a different perspective. Dr. Hallowell is a child and adult psychiatrist who has been treating ADHD for over 30 years, taught at Harvard Medical School for over 20, and who has both ADHD and dyslexia himself. (More about him is at the end of this article for those who are interested.) Will there ever be a single solution, or one pill, for all children (or even adults)? I take exception to Dr. Edward M. Can you learn while you sleep? from Harvard Health Publications. Getting enough restful sleep restores the mind and body, preparing both for the challenges that lie ahead.
Without it, mood, concentration, and mental performance suffer. And according to research reported in the February 2012 Harvard Men’s Health Watch, sleep may actually improve cognitive function. These findings suggest that even a brief nap may help boost learning, memory, and creative problem solving. Sleep is divided into two major phases, rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non–rapid-eye-movement (NREM).
Sleep begins with the NREM state, which lasts about 60 to 90 minutes, before REM sleep kicks in. Dreaming is most common during REM sleep, but it may also occur during the early stages of NREM sleep. A 2010 Harvard study found that dreaming may reactivate and reorganize recently learned material, improving memory and boosting performance. Each of the subjects spent an hour learning how to navigate through a complex three-dimensional maze-like puzzle.
Is Your Language Making You Broke and Fat? Keith Chen, an economist from Yale, makes a startling claim in an unpublished working paper: People's fiscal responsibility and healthy lifestyle choices depend in part on the grammar of their language. Here's the idea: Languages differ in the devices they offer to speakers who want to talk about the future. For some, like Spanish and Greek, you have to tack on a verb ending that clearly marks future time—so, in Spanish, you would say escribo for the present tense ( I write or I'm writing ) and escribiré for the future tense ( I will write ). But other languages, like Mandarin, don't require that their verbs be escorted by grammatical markers that convey future time—time is usually obvious from something else in the context. In Mandarin, you would say the equivalent of I write tomorrow, using the same verb form for both present and future.
Chen's paper has yet to be accepted for publication, but it's already generated a lot of press of the sort that's festooned with flashing lights.
How to Deal with a Difficult or Bullying Boss. We've all had bosses who are difficult to deal with. Bosses who are inconsistent or unprofessional, bosses who put you in a no-win situation, backstabbing bosses, or bosses who are downright bullies. Here are four strategies to use to deal with your difficult boss. . In all likelihood, you are frustrated with your difficult boss because he or she consistently displays bad behavior. It is the pattern of bad behavior that drives you crazy (or in some cases, the boss's inconsistent behavior, as in you-never-know-what-you're-going-to-get). The best way to deal with a difficult boss is to have a plan of action in place. As one client told me, "When the boss calls an ‘emergency' staff meeting, we usually know that she is going to go off on us. The key is to anticipate the boss's bad behavior. Be proactive by approaching the situation with a positive mental attitude.
You likely know the difficult boss's pattern of bad behavior, so anticipate and prepare your responses beforehand. . Hate Your Husband? (or Your Wife?) The ironic thing about this month of love is that the first six weeks or so of the New Year are the busiest time of the year for divorce lawyers (or so they say ). Seems that many people are not feeling as much love and romance as Hallmark would hope. Many are actually feeling hate. I have a theory about this. If I asked my grandmother if her late husband was her best friend, her provider, her lover, and her partner in parenting and life—her go-to guy for emotional fulfillment, practical help, AND the center of her social universe—she would have laughed uproariously.
She did love her hubby until the day he died and still misses him so much she weeps talking about him, more than 30 years after his death. But my Opa wasn't her best friend (her girlfriend Beulah was). But she'd tell you she had a marriage . And yet, like most of my peers, I would not sign up for her life—or, in particular, her marriage. In other words: "Help! Ah-ha. More than that, we are entitled to more, and better. The Malignant Divorce: Has NASA Gone Postal? Heaven has no rage like love betrayed. We owe the term "going postal" to a series of killing sprees instigated by postal workers. It would seem that, sadly, a new term "going NASA" is in the works. On January 13th 2012, Shannon O'Roark Griffin become the second former NASA employee to commit a crime of vengeful rage. Killings by mentally broken people were once uncommon, but in recent times they have risen both in frequency and visibility.
Arguably, America was first introduced to what apparently law abiding citizens can do when they lose their minds by Charles Whitman, the infamous 1966 Texas University Sniper. I will never forget the image - almost as powerful as the Kennedy assassination in my consciousness of that time; a lone gunman on a tower picking off defenseless students for reasons known only to him. In other words, it took a physical anomaly in Whitman's brain to trigger murder. At the time of the Whitman shooting, this type of violence was uncommon. Mrs. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Why does Batman matter? It's now official. Batman is the greatest comic book superhero.
Readers of Comic Heroes magazine voted Batman in gold medal position ahead of Spider-Man followed by Superman. This is great for Batman and the legions of fans around the globe. But why does Batman matter anyway? As readers of this blog will likely know, I wrote a book exploring the scientific possibility of Batman. In writing "Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero" I sought an answer to a deceptively simple question: Is it possible for any human to attain the skills and abilities of Batman?
Batman is one of a fairly small group of comic book superheroes that have a feel of "reality" about them. Batman represents the pinnacle of human performance and is perfect superhero to think about for possibilities. But are they? Those who have worked closely with the Batman character over the years have had many interesting comments about the meaning of the Dark Knight. Batman matters by showing us our own potential. . © E. Real Women Take Center Stage as Hollywood Finally Gets It! Meryl Streep, at age 62, not only made it to the February cover of Vogue magazine, but soon after was celebrated at the Academy Awards for her starring role in the "Iron Lady.
" It is a wonderful thing seeing her admired for her growing talent, beauty and grace. And she was not alone this year at the Oscars. Did anyone notice the other dozen or so middle aged nominees? Glenn Close, Viola Davis and Janet McTeer were among them, stunning audiences not only in their brilliant film roles, but by their mature presence at the award ceremony. These women, along with Susan Sarandon, Annette Bening, Helen Mirren and Betty White are showing up center stage and all over the media these days.
Could it be that Madison Ave and Hollywood are finally getting it right—that audiences are eager to celebrate real-looking women, rather than plastic, youth-defying ones? Around the same time, "A Little too Ready for Her Close Up? " What do you think about the trend toward 'real' women in the media? The Beauty Factor: Men, Women and the Misperception of Sexual Interest. Whether you're married, single or somewhere in between, you've likely dealt with the ambiguous dance of romantic courtship at some point. Even long-term couples who naively assumed ‘all that' would be over once they settled down have to mind their Ps and Qs lest they give the impression of being on the ‘married but looking' market.
While courting rituals have changed over time, partners have long used ambiguous social signals. Ambiguity provides a buffer for the ‘signaler's' reputation as they try to gauge the recipient's sexual interest. It's widely known that men are more likely to jump to sexual conclusions than women; a theory of error management (EMT) suggests that this is because evolutionarily, missed opportunities were more costly than false alarms for men.
While a rejection may be socially embarrassing, most women don't respond antagonistically to an unwelcome overture in an appropriate context, and the courtship energy spent on false alarms is relatively trivial for most men. Should We Care that More Women Are Having Children without Having Husbands? Yes, I know all about the latest angst about single mothers, set off a few weeks ago by the article in the , " For women under 30, most births occur outside marriage . " I wasn't going to go there. I have written about single parenting over and over again . In some ways, the myth that the children of single parents are doomed is one of the most exasperating to try to challenge. Too many people are just too sure it is true. The issue is not personal to me because I'm a single mother—I'm not.
The scientific problem with the sober and scolding claims that the children of single parents just aren't going to measure up to the achievements and well-being of the children of married parents is this: Often, it is the studies cited in supposed support of those claims that just don't measure up. She also argues that the subtle judgmentalism of the is "in many ways more pernicious than the overt moralizing of conservatives on the downfall of family and marriage .
How Emotionally Attached Are You to Your Pet? LSD helps to treat alcoholism. Not Being a Troll Isn't Enough: A Handbook to Being a Model Internet Citizen. When I threw my boyfriend in front of a car. Mindus Interruptus: Distractions are Costlier than You Think! The thrill of blaming others. Addiction and Afghanistan, Volkow and Obama. "Lady, Your Dog Is Fat!" The "Career Woman" Myth. The You Behind Your Resume. Adultolescence: It's the Beginning of a New Age | Think Tank. Psychoticperc. Psychology & Philosophy. The "Career Woman" Myth.